Wordpress 2.7 has been released couple of months ago. Version 2.7 of Wordpress Mu has finally been released. It’s the first  beta release of Wordpress Mu 2.7.

Lead developer of Wordpress Mu, Donncha O Caoimh, has announced the release yesterday to public. He says that final version of Mu 2.7 will be released real soon.

  Download Wordpress MU 2.7 Beta (2.0 MiB, 135 hits)(Linked to file at “mu.wordpress.org”)

With this new release, you can enjoy useful features and new design of Wordpress 2.7 in your blog network. You can also keep yourself updated with the software by visiting “mu.wordpress.org“

What is MU? and What is it for?

Do you ever visit wordpress.com and wonder how they manage a neat site like that and wish to have your own network?  Wordpress is actually letting you have a copy of that software that’s being used.  So if you wish, you can own your blog network too.

MU stands for “Multi User”.

It’s funny how I only discovered MU version of Wordpress only couple of months ago even though I have been using wordpress for some time now.  I already set up the software  on my localhost to test it.  It’s actually as easy as managing a blog.

If you head over to the plugins site of wordpress, you will notice that the amount of blog statistics plugins are many.  One of the most popular one is Wordpress.com Stats plugin.  It allows you to use the stats system that they use over at Wordpress.com on your self hosted blog which is pretty neat because plugin is pretty accurate compare to the other stats plugin.

Once it’s running it’ll begin collecting information about your pageviews, which posts and pages are the most popular, where your traffic is coming from, and what people click on when they leave. It’ll also add a link to your dashboard which allows you to see all your stats on a single page. Less is more.

The reason I use this plugin is its accuracy on collecting pageviews.  For my new three column wordpress theme design, I thought I would put the most popular posts according to “Wordpress.com Stats Plugin” in my right sidebar. Plugin doesn’t have any specifications on how you can managed to get those posts listed in your template.So  I google searched it to see if anyone created a plugin to achieve that and couldn’t find anything.  I tried better keywords and I have found Wordpress.com Popular Posts.  It’s widget supported so you don’t have to know any PHP for those who are not familiar with Wordpress templates.

If you click on that link that I provided above will take you the plugin’s homepage at author’s site, here is the link to plugin’s page at Wordpress.org.

How to use it in your template?

<?php if (function_exists('WPPP_show_popular_posts')) WPPP_show_popular_posts(); ?>

This will list the first five most popular posts. You might want to try to visit the plugin homepage at author’s site to see how you can add different specifications like posts views or to read the comments if you are having a problem with the plugin. There are some other parameters you can use as well.

Wordpress team just released the third beta version of Wordpress 2.7. First thing you will notice will be the new background color, new background color is a darker tone of white color. I think this makes the new design easy on the eyes. New design has that soft & clean look.  There are a lot of fixes, 160 to be precise.  They changed submenu fonts.  New menu has been improved. Overal, it’s probably a beta release that you don’t want to miss out on. If you’re already using a 2.7 version, scroll down to bottom right of your admin panel and click on “stay updated” then follow instructions.  If you are still using 2.6, here is the download link for 2.7 Beta 3.

• Numerous style improvements and refinements.
• All admin notices now go under the page title.
• PHP Notice fixes.
• Dashboard widget options now properly save.
• Menu fixes.
• New design for Quick Edit.
• Canonical feed URL fixes.
• Walker fixes.
• An update for Hello Dolly.
• Plugin installer updates.
• Numerous font updates.
• Updated login logo.
• Click here to read more….

I gotta say I’m pretty impressed with new design. They are making it better on every release. I can’t wait for the next one.

Wordpress has released a beta version for their next release 2.7. As they have announced before, this version of wordpress comes with a newly designed admin panel.  As said in the announcement post, new designed is not completely finished. There are some glitches but they will be fixed before the RC version of Wordpress 2.7, which will be released on November 10.

I must say they have done a great job with this new design.  It looks great. Although, I’ll be missing the old style. It gives you full control on your admin index page. You can customize it as you wish. Unfortunately, they are behind their schedule and won’t be able to release 2.7 on November 10.  It’s been postponed to  the end of November.

One of the new features that I really like is that automatic upgrades. You can now upgrade your Wordpress without downloading the version from the site and upload it to your website. I know this was announced before but it’s good to see it in action.

Finally, a list. I have been waiting for this for long time. I have been browsing ideas section at Wordpress dot org and I really liked some of the thoughts for future releases and finally I stumbled accross with this post. According to the roadmap, Wordpress 2.7 will be released in November, only couple of months away.

2.7 is going to be a great update because of these new features;

• New admin UI based on the crazyhorse experimental UI branch with new menus and navigation
• New edit post page that allows dragging and dropping of meta boxes. Boxes can be expanded and collapsed as before and now also completely hidden.
• Ability to hide columns on the content index pages
• Inline editing of posts and pages on the content index pages
• Comments XMLRPC API (Who wants comment moderation on the iPhone? Me.)
• Reply to comments from the admin
• Keyboard hot keys for managing comments
• Threaded Comments and new wp_list_comments() API
• Sticky Posts
• Automatic plugin install and integrated plugin browser
• Automatic upgrade of WordPress
• HTTPOnly auth cookies
• New HTTP request API
• A new SSH2 filesystem abstraction for updates and installs over sftp

Automatic Upgrade of Wordpress was a must, I’m glad they are finally making this happen.  Sticky posts are going to be useful. Can’t wait for the beta releases. If everything goes well, features like theme update can make it for 2.7. I’m pretty excited about this as well since I own a theme at wordpress dot org.

Please head over to Ryan Boren’s post to read the rest of his post.